Diamonds are a girls best friend but coloured gemstones have never been more popular..

Over the past nine years, the price of sapphires and rubies appears to have increased faster than the price of diamonds.Coloured stones are generally much more affordable than their harder, pricier relatives and coloured gemstone jewellery is a big market .

And millions more people, particularly in Asia, want to buy them. But could another reason be that many more women are now buying gemstones for themselves? Generally when men choose gems for their partners, they very often go for diamonds. But when women do the choosing themselves, they often choose at least one coloured gemstone in a jewellery piece - a sapphire , a ruby, or an emerald.

They have also take influence from celebrities like Penelope Cruz and Angelina Jolie, who can buy plenty of diamonds, but who quite often choose to wear emerald and sapphires instead. And then there is the Duchess of Cambridge, with the beautiful engagement ring she inherited from Princess Diana.

Jewellers say that many customers just love the colourful gemstones and even if they still want one diamond in an engagement ring, they also want a touch of colour. Quite often what women want is a vintage jewellerytype setting, with coloured side stones.

The demand for coloured stones has increased three times since 2010, and as a result many companies are selling fewer diamonds. It seems that women are driving the market. When men shop for jewellery they tend to go for a diamond solitaire, and it can be a daunting experience for a man. Whereas women often know exactly what they want , often looking for original handmade jewellery and some will request particular alterations such as changing small diamonds to sapphires. For more information about gemstone jewellery check out the news pages of this site

Record breaking diamonds..

Have you ever wondered what is the most expensive diamond in the world ?On October the 7th at Southebys Hong Kong a diamond ring with a fancy purple pink diamond weighing 8.41 carats was sold for a record breaking 17.8 million dollars. This works out at about 2.1 million dollars per carat. Whoever was to receive that as an engagement ring would be very pleased!

In terms of the previous record holder - that was a 5.00-carat vivid pink diamond, sold for $10,776,660, again in Hong Kong around November 2009.To put that into perspective. The Pink Star diamond is the most expensive gemstone to sell at auction. This 59.60 carat pink diamond was sold for $83.02 million at Sotheby’s in November 2013. That’s only just $1.4 million per carat. The buyer did not come up with themoney to complete the purchase though, and Sotheby’s owns that beauty. The Graff Pink, a 24.78 carat pink diamond, was sold for $46 million. That’s only !$1.9 million a carat.